Page 2 of Dark Shaman: The Lost Treasure
The explosion knocked him backward, a blast of superheated gas and ash erupting from the mountain's peak. Eluheed's vision went white as the shockwave hit, his body tumbling through the air like a leaf on a gust of wind. He slammed into a rock face, the impact cracking ribs that immediately began to heal.
When his vision cleared, the world had transformed into a nightmare.
The sky had turned black as night, choked with volcanic ash that fell like hellish snow. Lightning crackled through the ash clouds, illuminating the mountain in terrible flashes. And below, far below where the villages nestled in the valleys, the screaming began.
Eluheed looked up toward the cave's entrance, or where it had been. The entire face of the mountain was gone, sheared away in a massive landslide that was even now racing down towardthe inhabited areas below. Millions of tons of rock and earth, moving with the speed of an avalanche.
"No!" This time he screamed the word, his anguish lost in the mountain's roar.
His charges, his sacred duty, were buried beneath half a mountain, lost perhaps forever. The weight of his failure crushed him more thoroughly than any falling rock could have.
But the distant screams cut through his despair.
There were thousands of people below, toward whom death was racing at an impossible speed.
Eluheed turned his back on the obliterated cave and on his charges that would continue to slumber under the rocks without him and bolted toward the village below. The landscape blurred past as he descended at incredible speed, leaping over chasms that hadn't existed minutes before. The landslide thundered behind him, a wall of death that grew with every meter it traveled, collecting rocks and earth into its hungry mass.
The first village appeared through the ash fall—Akhuri, home to nearly two thousand souls. The small houses clustered around an ancient church, their inhabitants confused by the darkness and the shaking earth.
"Run!" Eluheed roared as he burst into the village square. "Run for your lives!"
An elderly woman stood in her doorway, frozen in terror. "The world is ending," she wailed. "God has forsaken us!"
"God wants you to run." Eluheed grabbed her arm, practically lifting her from her feet. "Now!"
But it was already too late. He could feel the landslide's approach through the ground, a vibration that grew to a roar that drowned out all other sound. Some of the villagers ran screaming, while others stood frozen, staring up at the mountain they'd lived beneath all their lives, unable to comprehend that it was about to kill them all.
Eluheed dropped the old woman and sprinted toward the church, where children were running out, their teacher trying to herd them away from the incoming disaster.
The landslide crested the ridge above the village like a tsunami of earth and stone. Eluheed had seconds at best.
He grabbed a boy, then a girl who couldn't have been more than five. He could only save so many.
The teacher pushed more children toward him. "Take them. Save who you can."
He grabbed two more when the houses started to explode into splinters. The church, which had stood for five hundred years, vanished in an instant. The screaming suddenly stopped, replaced by the grinding roar of millions of tons of debris flowing.
Eluheed ran, four children clutched against his chest, his legs pumping with desperate strength. The ground beneath him was disappearing, consumed by the advancing wall of destruction. He leaped over a stone fence just as it was swallowed up, the children screaming in terror.
Ahead, the ground rose slightly—not enough to stop the landslide, but perhaps enough to slow it. Eluheed pushed harder, his muscles burning. He could feel the heat of the debrisflow now, the friction of so much moving earth raising the temperature to lethal levels.
They crested the rise just as the landslide caught up to them.
Eluheed threw himself forward, curling his body around the children as they tumbled. Rocks battered him, tearing flesh that immediately tried to heal. A tree branch punched through his shoulder. He screamed but didn't let go of the children.
They tumbled in the chaos for what felt like hours but was probably only seconds. Then, miraculously, they were thrown clear, ejected from the edge of the flow onto solid ground.
Eluheed uncurled, checking each child. Bruised, terrified, covered in dust and blood—but alive. All four of them.
Behind them, the landslide continued its destructive path, heading for more villages below. Eluheed could already see the dust cloud rising from where Akhuri had been. Two thousand people gone in less than a minute.
"Stay here," he told the children, setting them in a cluster by a large rock. "Don't move. I'll come back for you."
The oldest boy grabbed Eluheed's torn sleeve. "Don't leave us!"
"I have to try to save others," Eluheed said, prying the small fingers loose. "Be brave. Watch the little ones."
He didn't wait for a response. The landslide was heading for the monastery of St. Jacob, where dozens of monks lived. Perhaps he could still save them.
